They never get old…

I am now at race #23 and I have to be honest they never get old.  It never has become old, I never say or boo I have to do a run this weekend.  I get excited every time I have to go to Road Runner Sports to pick up my race packet.  It is funny they are starting to know me there now.

So now time to get Flat Teri out of the closet and ready to run.  Now I know, there is my From Fat To Finish Line shirt again, whats up with that.  First off I don’t really like the race shirts that they give out as they are heavy cotton and not comfortable and my FFTFL shirt is a tech shirt.  But also its the feeling I get when I wear it and what it stands for, where I started and that I have so many more finish lines to cross.  Its the amazing people that I have met and how much my life has changed since meeting this group.  To be honest there is power in this shirt.

So this race is the inaugural race and you could tell that by the turn out, as there were only 127 people running this race.  The funny thing was when I got my goody bag it had some pretty cool stuff in it and you know us runners, we love the swag.  I got a inflatable guitar, head streamers and sunglasses that lit up. Unfortunately they broke pretty quick when I was trying them on.  So I get down to the race and in appears I am the only one that is wearing the head streamers, I mean come on dual purpose I look cool and it keeps my hair out of my face.  I mean at least one or two other people would have wore them, maybe they knew something I did not.

Even with this small amount of runners that had signed up they had two waves a 7:30 am and a 8:00 am. Unfortunately both waves had late starts. Also the course was common but there was not alot of entertainment along it.

But what was really nice is the warm up guy Nasara Gargonnu is the same that has been at the majority of y runs.  I love him as he has great music and a very motivating personality.  I actually took the time this race to introduce myself and say hi.  I thanked him for getting me ready to run my races over this past year.

The course was pretty simple as I have ran here so many times, it is a popular course for races.  I am proud of my time 32:49 with a pace of 10:15.  I placed 47th out of 121 overall.  And the cool thing is in my age group I placed 2nd out of 7 runners.  One of my goals is to have to stay around long enough to get a medal for placing in my age group.  Some Day it will happen.

This race has got me thinking about why I am doing these races and is it just a number or do they have a purpose.  What I came up with is it did start out with how many can I do before the end of the year and how will my weight change as I do these races.  Now though it is how much farther can I run and can I be faster.

I love 5K’s as normally its about 2 and a half hours from the time I have to get up and get down to the race and then I have been able to run these in a little over 30 Mins.  Then I got the rest of the day to myself.  But guess what that is not enough anymore.  I want 10k’s I want something to challenge me out of my comfort level.  So over the next couple months you may see some exciting challenges coming my way.  This all started as my weight loss journey but the cool part is somewhere along the way I became a runner.   I run to ru and the weight loss well that will be the side effect of this and not the other way around.

So as always I will see you at the finish line!